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Will Alistair Overeem Ever Matter Again?

Getting busted for performance-enhancing drugs in MMA is kind of like getting caught in a misdemeanor lie by your wife. You’re going to be despised for a while, and you’re going to pay dearly, but after enough flowers, candy, sweetness…

Alistair Overeem is the latest villain in the ongoing PED melodrama.

As you’ll recall, the gargantuan Dutchman was recently nailed for having a testosterone/epitestosterone (T/E) level of 14:1, which is well above the generous 6:1 ratio allowed by the Nevada State Athletic Commission. He was booted from the UFC 146 main event title fight and despised the world over.

Overeem deserves every bit of criticism levied his way, but is he really that different from the dozens of other fighters who’ve popped hot for banned substances over the years?

Consider this timeline of fighters who’ve failed drug tests put together by CagePotato.

There are some interesting names on that list, even the Godfather of the UFC, Royce Gracie.

That’s right, Royce popped hot after finally avenging his loss to Kazushi Sakuraba in 2007. He never fought in MMA again, but Gracie’s legacy is still quite intact. It was stained only momentarily. Rarely do you ever hear the word “steroid” used in the same sentence as “Royce Gracie” any longer.

Chael Sonnen was nailed for testosterone following his loss to Anderson Silva at UFC 117, and miraculously had an even higher T/E level of 17:1. Where is he now? Training for another shot at the title.

The list is long and distinguished, and what it indicates is that we either don’t really care much about fighters using PEDs, or we have pathetically short memories.

Overeem’s case may be a bit different, but only in the sense that he’s grown so massive in the past few years that he seemed to be dangling his usage right in front of our eyes, taunting the system to catch him—kind of like a killer who sends clues of his crimes to the police.

Many of the fighters who’ve failed drug tests didn’t really look much different than they always have. Overeem got big, real big, and that physical transformation is how we correlate PEDs. There has long been speculation of Overeem’s misdeeds. The running joke in the MMA community is the “horsemeat diet” that allowed Overeem to transform from a lanky light heavyweight to a He-Man action figure in just a few years.

Until failing his post-UFC 146 press conference drug test, though, it was all nothing more than conjecture.

Overeem didn’t help that speculation when he skipped out on a drug test last year, claiming he had to go to Holland to care for his sick mother. Maybe that was legit, but with all the assumption, and now the proof to back it up, there’s evidence to cast a justifiable shadow on the past few years of his career.

However, just like every other fighter who failed a drug test, Overeem will eventually be forgiven his transgressions. And if the UFC doesn’t cut Overeem, it’ll likely keep him out of the public eye for a while.

This issue will undoubtedly come up again when he fights next, but with every passing fight it will come up less and less, until—if history is any indication—it just kind of fades away.

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MMA: Michael Bisping Sounds Off on Hector Lombard and Title Shots

UFC title shots don’t grow on trees. No one knows that better than middleweight contender Michael “The Count” Bisping. Bisping has been chasing a title shot since winning The Ultimate Fighter 3 back in 2006. Since dropping to t…

UFC title shots don’t grow on trees. No one knows that better than middleweight contender Michael “The Count” Bisping.

Bisping has been chasing a title shot since winning The Ultimate Fighter 3 back in 2006. Since dropping to the 185-pound division, “The Count” has compiled an impressive 8-3 record.

However, with losses to Dan Henderson, Wanderlei Silva and Chael Sonnen sandwiched between his victories, a shot at UFC gold has eluded the British fighter.

Still though, Bisping feels as though he’s paid his dues through his time slugging it out against the best in the world for the past six years.

That’s why it upset him when Dana White recently indicated that if the newly acquired Hector Lombard can get past Brian Stann in his Octagon debut, he may earn a title shot.

According to Bisping, Lombard is unworthy because he spent his career beating up nobodies.

It does piss me off a little bit, you know? I’ve been slugging away in the UFC for six years now, fighting the best guys in the world and just because Hector Lombard’s been knocking out little part-time fighters who probably hold down jobs full-time and he’s been knocking out people that I haven’t got a clue who they are, I haven’t even heard of them, you know, while I’ve been knocking out the best fighters in the world and fighting the best consistently for six years and he’s going to come in from knocking out John the baker from around the corner and you know, he gets a title shot?

Theatrics and exaggerations aside, it’s difficult to argue with Bisping here.

Lombard may very well be as good as his hype. We simply don’t know. His stunning record of 31-2-1-1 is padded with a “Who’s That?” catalog of opponents.

The only times the Olympic Judoka has ever competed in a major promotion, he lost to Akihiro Gono and Gegard Mousasi in Pride—the same year that Bisping won The Ultimate Fighter 3.

Since then, Lombard has been on a statistically brilliant 24-fight win streak, but he hasn’t fought anyone in even the top 20.

So is it fair that Lombard can spend his career fighting low- to mid-level opponents and then walk into the UFC and get a title shot after only a single win? Probably not.

Does it matter? Heck, no.

Hector Lombard is an unknown commodity to casual UFC fans. That allows them to sell him as a legitimate title challenger and if he can beat Brian Stann, then that’s all the validation they need.

The Cuban-born Lombard is a beast. He’ll be an easy sell with his record and his highlight reel of devastating knockouts—at least to the fans who don’t know or care that he has never defeated a top-shelf fighter.

Fighters like Michael Bisping, who have been with the UFC for years, may view situations like this as unfair, but the UFC needs a constant stream of sellable contenders to keep the divisions fresh and interesting.

Bisping had his chance to earn a title shot back in January. He lost to Chael Sonnen. So it’s not as if he hasn’t had his own opportunities.

With a couple good wins, Bisping will get to the title again. In the meanwhile though, there’s nothing wrong with keeping things moving along with new challengers.

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Why a Subscription PPV Model Makes Sense for the UFC and Its Fans

Being an MMA fan is not cheap. It’s not like football or baseball, where the price of a basic cable package pretty much covers the season. And for the hardcore fans, there is always the deluxe package available for a couple of hundred bucks extra…

Due to the amount of numbered UFC events put on in the last few years, MMA fans are asked to plunk down about $800 a year for pay per views (PPV), and an additional $100 or so for a Showtime subscription so we can watch Strikeforce.

True, for that $100 you can also watch Dexter, but how many seasons can we bear of everyone’s favorite serial killer narrowly evading detection?

In an average household budget, $900 pays for a year’s worth of car insurance, or a year of cell phone service, or a year of Tiger Schulman’s for the kiddies.

Basically, it’s a household expense; not a major one, but enough of an expense that it needs to be factored into the monthly budget. And with the price tag of cable already quite high, most households simply cannot justify adding an additional $50 to that for a PPV event, at least not regularly.

Many would-be UFC fans do not watch solely due to the price of the PPV. And because they’re out of the loop for the major events, they don’t follow up with the smaller ones.

It’s mind-boggling that so many casual fans have no clue that there’s a free event this weekend on Fox. There it is, a quality event, readily available at no additional cost, and these fight fans don’t even know it’s on.

The reason is because there’s a lack of continuity when someone misses so many important fights. There’s no incentive for them to make the effort to follow the sport. Most casual fans are also fans of the stick and ball sports.

Why should they scour the Internet to find out there’s a UFC card on Saturday night when they know there’s a baseball game on? They just want to get lost in the wonderment of passion that a few hours of sporting brings into our lives; could be baseball, football, fighting, whatever.

The UFC has tapped out the pay-per-view market. A new model, a subscription-based pay-per-view model, would not only benefit the fans, but UFC as well.

The UFC would benefit in that their fan base would grow. They’d pull in less revenue at first, but as time went on and the model caught on, their revenue would rise to comparable or even greater levels.

Offer a product at a high price and some will always buy. Offer it at a low price and you entice more consumers into the market.

The UFC is not subject to the same market forces as other products. There is a demand for fights, but they have a set price of $45-$50, regardless of the quality of event.

A Ford Focus costs less that a Ford Avalanche even though they’re both part of the Ford brand. A UFC PPV is always the same price regardless of whether it’s headlined by Georges St. Pierre or Frankie Edgar. Thus, consumers are forced to make decisions.

Having all the events available to the subscription buying public would negate the decision making process for consumers.

If every PPV event now carries a total cost of $800, they can offer a package subscription deal for $400. They would draw many new fans into the sport.

A UFC subscription would become a Christmas gift favorite wives buy for their husbands. Just as when the “NFL Package” came out, guys would brag about it to their friends.

The goal should be to draw new fans into the sport, fans that after being able to follow the fights for a while will become loyal fans.

What end does it serve, other than a little entertainment, for a guy to happen upon this Saturday’s fights if he has absolutely no clue what’s going on in the sport other than that he gets to sit there for a couple of hours and watch guys punch each other in the face?

They’ll watch, and that’s great, but then they’ll go about their business and put it out of their minds because they know the next one costs $50.

By fostering an environment where fans could easily and affordably follow the sport, the UFC would be creating new fans…fans who aren’t in it for just two hours, but who will develop an emotional stake in the sport and its fighters.

Basically, they will be creating long-term, loyal fans who will not only know that there is simply a fight on this weekend, they’ll know who’s fighting, how they got there, if they’re sniffing a title shot, the injuries that they’re battling, and they’ll be hooked because they’ll then be armed with the knowledge required to develop a passion.

And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Having that passion is what drives us fight freaks to buy every single PPV.

The PPV model is stale. Even the UFC knows that. Dana White has even stated his intention of eventually getting away from PPV.

PPV currently accounts for the great majority of the UFC’s revenue, however, so it’s not likely a vision that is anywhere near fruition.

They’d need to firmly establish themselves on network television, and with the FOX deal in its infancy, the prospect of moving away from the PPV model is a long way off.

They need to draw new fans into the sport. The Fox deal was a huge step in that direction, but it’s going to take time.

For MMA to become a mainstream sporting commodity, they would need to be able to generate enough advertising revenue via television to split with the PPV base they’ve used since their creation almost two decades ago.

It’s great that that’s their goal, but it’s a long-term goal. In the short term, loyal fans are struggling to keep up with the sport and its costly price tag.

A subscription-based PPV model would serve all interested parties greatly.

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UFC on Fox: Why Jim Miller Will Beat Nate Diaz on May 5

When Jim Miller steps into the Octagon this Saturday night to face Nate Diaz, the winner will insert his name at the top of the pecking order. Lightweight is deep, so a win may not guarantee a title shot, but it’s just that level of intense compe…

When Jim Miller steps into the Octagon this Saturday night to face Nate Diaz, the winner will insert his name at the top of the pecking order.

Lightweight is deep, so a win may not guarantee a title shot, but it’s just that level of intense competition that brings out the best in fighters.

Jim Miller will be that fighter. Here’s why.

Jim is 10-2 in the UFC, with losses only to the current champion, Ben Henderson, and top contender, Gray Maynard. He lost both of those fights because he couldn’t out-grapple his opponents.

Jim is a solid striker, but it’s not his strong suit. Getting out-struck by Maynard (perhaps the finest wrestler in the division), Jim simply had no other options. He couldn’t get the fight to the mat, so he had to settle for a kickboxing match where he just wasn’t up to snuff.

Against Henderson, he got out-struck and out-grappled. What seemed from the sidelines as desperation, Jim dropped for several high-risk/low-yield submission attempts (guillotines and Kimuras) against a guy who is known for being excellent at defending submissions.

It was not the greatest of strategies. And he lost.

Against Diaz, Miller will have the wrestling advantage, and that will be the difference in the fight.

Nate has a bit of a takedown issue. In four of his five UFC losses, he was taken down by strong wrestlers with good enough jiu-jitsu skills to avoid being tapped out.

Clay Guida, Joe Stevenson, Dong-Hyun Kim and Rory MacDonald all ran a wrestling clinic on Nate Diaz and scored decision wins.

Jim Miller is a very good wrestler, and a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt…the exact formula that gives Nate nightmares.

It’s not even going to matter that Nate has adopted his brother Nick’s high volume striking attack, with great success.

He did it against guys like Marcus Davis, Takanori Gomi and Donald Cerrone, who were all content to stand in front of Nate and take the beating his excellent striking skills had no problem administering.

Jim Miller will not do that.

Once Nate starts getting the better of him on the feet, which with a four-inch height advantage and a five-inch reach advantage, in addition to just being a better striker should be pretty early on in the fight, Jim is going to make it a grappling match, and he will win that one nine times out of ten.

Nate is certainly no slouch on the ground. He was recently awarded his own black belt by Cesar Gracie, and boasts 10 submission victories to his credit. But Nate lacks the takedown ability to bring the fight to the ground.

He gets taken to the ground, and against Miller, he’ll get taken to the ground by someone he will have a very difficult time catching in a triangle.

Nate is a great fighter, an exciting fighter. He’s won eight Fight Night bonuses. But there’s a reason why in 2010 he departed the lightweight division, then departed the welterweight division back to the lightweight division a year later: he can’t wrestle, and wrestling is the great equalizer in MMA.

Nate has done a great job thriving even with such a glaring weakness, but at the top level, that weakness continues to get exposed.

Jim Miller will win this fight on Saturday night, and even though he may not earn a title shot, he’ll put himself right back at the top of the heap.

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Enough Is Enough: Bring Gil Melendez to the UFC

You’d be hard pressed to find a reputable MMA media outlet that doesn’t have Strikeforce Lightweight Champion Gilbert Melendez ranked right at the top. The USA Today/SB Nation, Sherdog, and MMAWeekly rankings all put Gil right at No. 3, beh…

So why is he languishing in an organization that struggles to find him top shelf competition when he is already under the Zuffa banner?

Zuffa, the UFC’s parent company, bought Strikeforce last year. They pretty much gutted it and brought all the top talent into the UFC. The two biggest stars, Dan Henderson and Nick Diaz, were immediately transferred to the larger stage, and the Zuffa brass have stated their intention of dissolving the heavyweight division shortly after the conclusion of the tournament, which, barring any more unforeseen contingencies, will see a winner crowned in mid-May.

Holding the two chief MMA properties on the American scene, Zuffa has about 90 percent of the best fighters in the world under contract. Some may call that a monopoly, but in professional sports, monopolies are an occupational necessity.

The question stands: Why is Gil Melendez, one of the most talented fighters in the word, dying a slow death in a second-tier promotion that has to import past-their-prime Japanese fighters for him to beat up when he has organizational access to the best in the world?

Gil is 30 years old. He’s in his athletic prime, and yet he fought only once in 2010 and only twice in 2011. He’ll face Josh Thompson—for the third time—on May 19^th, and after that there’s pretty much no one left for him to fight. And even though this is a rubber match, the general consensus is that Thompson is on the down slope, while Gil is at the top of his game right now.

Basically, a fortunate scenario exists that allows Strikeforce to sell this fight, and it will be a good fight, but it’s a fight put together through expediency rather than meaning. The reason: they simply have no one else to throw at Gil.

This is the case unless they bring him to the UFC, which they absolutely should do, or send UFC lightweights to him, which, while an option, would only further serve to perpetuate the obvious notion that Strikeforce is not the UFC.

After all, they wouldn’t be sending top-level lightweights who headline pay per view events for “less than” fights on Showtime that hardly anyone watches. They’d send guys on the outs to make “interesting” fights. And there’s not a lot wrong with that. Strikeforce thrived for years by putting on “interesting” matchups.

But this is supposed to be the big time, and Gil Melendez is legit. He should not be chained to a second-tier organization, wasting away his best fighting years while the majority of the world’s top lightweight competition is so readily available to him.

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What Can the IMMAF Bring to the UFC?

One of UFC president Dana White’s favorite idioms is that fighting is universal. It smashes through all cultural boundaries. When two guys get into a cage and start going at it, it doesn’t matter where they’re from or what language they speak; it doesn’t matter if they live under a totalitarian regime or a free democracy; it doesn’t matter if they’re rich or poor; everybody watching understands.

MMA is already firmly established in America. The UFC has led the way and paved the road in terms of sanctioning and marketing. And the sport will continue to grow in America, but the real prize for growth potential is world expansion.

There is a world-wide market for mixed martial arts, and that means there’s money to be made by all countries who wish to participate.

In response to this global demand, the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation (IMMAF) was created on February 29, 2012. That mission statement of this newly formed body is:

“The purpose of IMMAF is to further the development and recognition of the sport of mixed martial arts, enabling international competition through the organization of national MMA federations around the world.”

The UFC has already invaded Canada, the UAE, Brazil, Japan, Australia and the European markets of England, Ireland, Germany and Sweden. And with plans in the works for China, the Philippines and beyond, an international regulatory body would strengthen the UFC’s position as it seeks to continue its expansion into foreign markets.

It legitimizes the sport as a whole for there to be one set of rules and regulations. It’s not an easy task considering different countries have different laws, interests and community standards. Indeed, just look at the issues the UFC is having getting sanctioned in New York as evidence of that, and that’s in their own country.

By backing the IMMAF, which the UFC brass has already done through press statements and having them present at their inaugural event in Sweden, it will ease the difficulty of sanctioning by spreading the gospel of legitimacy.

Another major objective of the IMMAF is to eventually get MMA included in the Olympics, and that’s something that has long been a goal of the UFC. Lorenzo Fertitta said, “It is our hope that it will also take us one step closer to witnessing the inclusion of the sport of MMA on the Olympic program.”

There was a time, not long ago, when that vision seemed like nothing more than a pipe dream, but with the way things are going now, it feels a whole lot more attainable.

It’s a very wise play for the UFC to support the IMMAF. They’ve been immensely successful thus far without much outside help, but to truly take this thing all over the world, they’re going to need some international muscle.

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